PSYCHO DOUGHNUTS

Psycho Doughnuts was all out of the bipolar doughnut said the nice young red headed nurse who served me. My fantasy, which I had been planning all the way down from San Francisco, had been to buy a dozen of these doughnuts leave the store and begin pitching them again the door of this shop in Campbell, California on the outskirts of San Jose, which is playing to the stigmatization of mental illness. I figured I could get a good nine or ten hits on the door of the establishment before the police descended on me. I would then claim the doughnuts made me do it. After all I was bipolar and I had just gone into this shop where they sold psycho doughnuts. What did they except?

The store was empty except for the young attendant, who apologized for being out of the bipolar doughnut. They were very popular she said. I wondered given the emptiness of the joint. She offered that I try their next most popular item, the “Massive Head Trauma Doughnut”. My plan for mayhem against the shop was fast fading in this young woman’s courteousness. I looked at the 13 doughnuts remaining in the tray between the lower layer of glazed apple fritters and the upper layer of banana cream pie doughnuts. They were big heavily glazed affairs oozing yellow filling at the side with a face made of two brown x’s for eyes, and a brown angle for the nose, and a brown squiggle for the mouth. Above one eye a glop of red filling burst through the surface of the doughnut. This was the massive head trauma. I said to the nurse I would have one of these doughnuts.

The other doughnuts weren’t so interestingly named. There was a butter nut, a cookie monster, a Mellow Drama, and several others whose names escape me. I ordered one mellow drama, a concoction of a French doughnut with rice crispies, glazing, and chocolate drizzle on top. The two doughnuts cost me over three dollars. I was glad I hadn’t ordered a dozen.

I looked around the shop. Indeed it was as the man in San Francisco at the NAMI conference had described the place to me. Everything in the shop made light of the seriousness of mental illness. On the wall behind the counter where the doughnuts are displayed a straight jacket is mounted. A group of plastic chairs is arranged in a circle near the entry door with a sign on wall that says “group therapy”. Small bad paintings on the walls depict all manners of psycho mayhem. One is named “cute killer”, a young woman with a knife dripping blood. In another is a smiling wide eyed woman in a strait jacket. The piece is called “All I need is a padded cell.” Next to the entry is a trash bin with a sign over it that says “Bates Motel.” Most demeaning of all is a little cubicle of three padded walls surrounding a chair with a chain across the front. This is called the padded cell.

With my purchased doughnuts I retreated out the door of this undistinguished storefront. All the place had from the outside was a small hand painted sign at the roof saying “Psycho Doughnuts” and a placard stuck to the door, which said “Open for Insanity.” There was no neon or anything grand. As a matter of fact the whole place was a rather cheap put on. I stood outside and watched the young attendant in her nurse’s outfit scurry about the interior. I wondered if I should throw my doughnuts at the door. I decided the act wasn’t worthy of my effort and headed south toward Los Angeles

After a while I became hungry. I bit into the Massive head trauma doughnut. What a sugar rush. This doughnut shouldn’t be called a psycho doughnut, but a cardiac arrest doughnut. I have never tasted such a sugar bomb in my life. The shop should be named Cardiac Arrest Doughnuts, but heart surgeons would put a stop to that. The name would be closer the reality of the product. I tried the other doughnut, the Mellow Drama. This doughnut was damn near uneatable, a weird tasting concoction I could recommend to no one. As bad as psycho doughnuts is for it puerile stigmatizing of mental illness, I think the place will not survive. Its product is so inferior and it’s interior so juvenile that it is not long for survival. May we all wish its failure soon and the nice young attendant get a real job as a real nurse?